empty things

my rooms are best shared
cluttered with someone else's things and someone else's shallow breathing to soften the sharpness of dark nights
the rattle of the air conditioner in the window across the room may be just enough to stave off lonely lonely silence
maybe I'll sleep somewhere else when you're gone from this room we share. Or set my cell-phone on the pillow beside me and in my half-sleep, imagine it a rope in my hand that travels miles and miles to its resting place in yours..
beside you on your pillow where you are breathing shallow, sleep-calmed breaths..
in a room cluttered with your things.

this room will feel empty. this town will feel empty. the laundry basket we used to share and the closet we crammed our thrift-store finds in: those will feel empty too.

empty things scare me so

but i wouldn't dare fill the spaces that still feel like yours

summer

I run like ambition
eat like austere
sleep like an after-thought
confide like fear
but i speak like carelessness
and dress like the brave
drive like the lucky
rest like a rave
i'll paint like the sleepless,
the restless; obsessed
write like the hawk out circling its nest
and sing like a shrug and a sauntering stride
laugh like a child with nothing to hide

mountain on fire

i let down my hair
and you set a mountain on fire

a roaring vision: hills in flame
then spoke of nothing but the feel of the air
and the sound of June rain
as it plays in your head all enclosed in your brain

and we're back again

I'm just a path to be given or taken

not a mountain on fire
roaring and bold
too loud to ignore
to sing of in dancing
or dip down to the floor


just a path un-burning
to be taken or given
not a blessing that happened
just a curs-ed decision


i watch for the day when my foothills meet embers
and the glow in the sky
is all you remember
nothing to speak of the rain all locked up
in a place without air to feed to my embers